Toni Lynn Washington is happy to sing the blues in Newton

Thursday

Apr 6, 2017 at 3:16 PMApr 6, 2017 at 3:16 PM

By Ed Symkus, Daily News Correspondent

Boston-based blues legend Toni Lynn Washington didn’t think much about a singing career when she was growing up in Southern Pines, North Carolina. She just did it for fun. Early on it was around the house with her grandmother Lena. Later, when the family moved to Boston, she got into listening to music on the radio and learning the jazzy and popular tunes being sung by everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Joe Williams to Doris Day. Her mother must have heard something special in that voice because she started bringing Toni Lynn – who at that time was still going by her real name: Dorothy Helen Leak – to talent shows at clubs around town. She was still too young to go by herself.

“A Life in the Blues,” the show Washington will perform at Newton City Hall’s War Memorial Auditorium on April 8, will feature all sorts of music – with an emphasis on the blues, and accompaniment by guitarist Paul Speidel and a few friends – as well as some stories of Washington’s musical journey that’s brought her through so many styles.

But she might get to the one about her name, so let’s do that here. Speaking by phone from her home in Mattapan, she explained how Dorothy Helen Leak became Toni Lynn Washington.

“There was a young girl by the name of Toni Harper who recorded a song called ‘Candy Store Blues’ when she was about 8, which became a big hit for her. I liked that name so I started calling myself Toni. Then my mom married a man named Washington, so we all became Washingtons. My daughter was born in 1960, and I named her after a singer called Barbara Lynn. I liked the name Lynn, too, so I added it to mine as a stage name. I just liked the sound of it.”

But she was making herself known as a singer in her own right long before that.

“I just sang whenever I could,” she said. “When I became of age, I started going to the clubs by myself. In many places I didn’t even get paid. I would just get up and sing with the band, and most of the songs I performed were by Ruth Brown or LaVern Baker or Dinah Washington.”

She later got married, then started moving around the country, eventually settling in California and hooking up with a band called Sound 70, which featured three male singers and her.

“I wasn’t singing blues with them,” she said. “We did a lot of top 40 stuff like the O’Jays and Aretha Franklin and a lot of Motown stuff. That was a lot of fun, and I felt like it would never end, but it did. I was kind of afraid to go out on my own because I had been with them for so many years. So when I left the group it was very intimidating to get up in front of a band and sing by myself. My husband and I broke up at that time, and that’s when I came back to Boston and started singing with different bands that invited me to work with them.”

One of them was the highly successful Boston Baked Blues, led by harmonica player Vinny Serino.

“That was where I met [keyboard player] Bruce Bears, and when he spun off from that band, he took me with him,” she said. “He started managing the Toni Lynn Washington Band, and that’s when I really started traveling and making money. That was also when I started singing more blues, but I really had to adapt myself because I didn’t know too much about the blues until I met those guys.”

Yet over the years, when Washington would make albums – her most recent was 2015’s “I Wanna Dance” – she would visit genres ranging from blues to ballads to rock. So, is blues still her favorite music to sing?

“I’ve got lots of favorites,” she said “I go wherever there’s a need. If there’s a jazz band that wants me to gig with them, I go with them. If I can do some funky stuff, I’ll go with them. If someone just wants blues, I go with them. I’m just so thankful that I’m able and know how to do all of that stuff. But, yes, the blues is a favorite of mine.”

At the Newton show, there will be plenty of blues, and Washington is ready to belt them out. But she’s a tad concerned about one other aspect of event.

“Singing is not a problem for me,” she said, then laughed and added, “But to stand in front of an audience and have them ask me questions, I feel like I’m being thrown under the bus a bit. Sometimes I just don’t know how to respond when people ask me questions. But it’s gonna be a really tight band and I’m sure they’ll be able to help me out with any questions.”

Without prompting, she added, “I’m having such a good time. I’m 80 years old now, and I’m still hanging in there, and I’ll be doing that as long as I can.”